Trump Signs Executive Order on Childhood Vaccine Recommendations
Order seeks to alter vaccine schedule, recommends splitting MMR despite scientific consensus and market availability.
Image: Eddie Pollard / AI
Sarah Connor
President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations.
The executive order removes COVID-19, influenza, and Hepatitis B from general recommendation; it also recommends splitting the mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three individual shots.
Single-dose MMR components are not currently available on the market.
Donald Trump called for breaking up the combined MMR vaccine into three separate single-dose shots.
Trump has also reportedly regurgitated discredited theories linking childhood vaccines to autism spectrum disorder.
Donald Trump claims that in decades past, when children received fewer vaccines, people were much healthier and the high rates of autism now observed did not exist.
The Trump administration has long pushed a discredited link between vaccines and autism, with Donald Trump repeatedly seeking to link vaccines to autism despite dozens of studies showing no link.
Executive orders serve as guidance to federal agencies and do not have a direct legal effect on the public; shots required for school attendance are set at the state and local level in the US.
The US attorney general would reportedly be tasked with challenging state laws that conflict with the executive order.